by Liz Crowe
It had captured the eye of a New York agent, pure luck, he fully acknowledged. The man had just started negotiating print rights with a large publishing house. Aiden still taught one class at the community college, but would be done with that once his daughter decided to make her appearance. Truth be told, his relief knowing they’d be having a girl had been boundless, despite Antony’s warnings about their teenaged difficulty.
In short, he wanted to be home with baby Amanda Lindsay, named for her two grandmamas, full time. And he wanted to keep Jeffrey home, too, the year before he went off to kindergarten. Rosalee warned him he might regret that, but had cancelled Jeffrey’s place in the daycare beginning in August. He’d concoct his next book around being home, taking care of his children, he insisted, ignoring his mother’s and wife’s scoffing disbelief.
When Dom ran into and over him, he shoved the man off, pushing him into the fencing hard enough to hear it rattle. Aiden glared at him, but Dom just grinned and tossed him the ball.
“I can’t beat the almost-daddy into the dirt today. Wouldn’t be right, now would it?”
Kieran grabbed the ball and headed in the other direction in silence. The three remaining brothers eyeballed each other. Kieran’s wedding had not gone off without a hitch. It had not gone off at all. They’d had a talk the previous week about it, when Kieran had skipped the game, claiming he had a torn hamstring. But none of them knew what to say or do to help. So they just played ball, glad to have the peacemaking member of the family back in their midst.
Aiden paused, catching his breath and wiping sweat from his face, pondering what a major shift had occurred in a single cycle of the calendar. He was so happy to have a home with his family, and anticipating something that excited, and terrified him to the point of paralysis at the same time.
“Oh, it sucks, dude. Don’t kid yourself. Those lucky assholes who got to sit in the waiting room puffing cigars had it too easy,” Antony had told him last week over post-basketball game bourbons. “So much screaming, pain, blood, and shit—no, actual shit. It’s the worst thing ever. You may never recover from it.” He’d draped a friendly arm around Aiden’s shoulders. “The concept of a son from my loins makes me a little queasy.”
Antony and Margot were having a boy—already named Joshua Anton for his two granddaddies. Josh and Mandy Love were both due within three days of one another, exactly one week from today.
But Aiden couldn’t wait to hold his baby daughter, his and Rosalee’s child. He shook his head at his own sappiness, shivering when a breeze blew up, sending the sun behind a scrum of dark clouds. Thunder sounded, and he watched the sky change as it will on a summer day in Kentucky, going from dark blue to gray in minutes. Lightning flashed, followed by another loud clap of thunder.
The rain hit fast and hard, drenching everyone before they could run for their vehicles. Aiden tilted his face back and let it cool him, opened his mouth to it, tasting the perfection of water from the sky, peace in his soul for the first time in his life.
Until he heard it—the loud honking of his father’s truck as it raced into the parking lot, shattering his illusion of peace forever.
“Aiden!” He heard his sister’s voice call through the deluge, and ever-increasing thunder claps. He ran full-out for the truck, heart racing with dread of what lay ahead.
He skidded to a stop at the back passenger door of his father’s truck. Angelique sat at the wheel of the empty cab.
“Where’s….” He gasped around the anxiety closing in on his throat.
“Daddy took them, both of them. Damn, it sure was some wild and crazy shit. Get in. Antony! Get your sorry ass over here!”
Antony dropped the basketball. His jaw dropped along with it.
“Let’s go!” Aiden yelled over the storm. “Love babies wait for no man, or thunderstorm!”
“Go on!” Dominic replied. “We’re right behind you with the cooler.”
Aiden took a breath, and gripped the headrest as Antony leapt into the car, his eyes wild.
“I’ll drive,” he told Angelique.
She rolled her eyes. “The hell you will. Daddy’s words. Settle back, knuckleheads. I’ve got this.”
The End
A Sneak Peek at
Coach Love
Book 2 of The Love Brothers series
Cara caught a flash of red hair atop a tall, familiar body the second she looked away from her computer. Face flushed hot, she glanced down at the screen to reabsorb the alarming news that not only would she be now taking on patients at three different locations, the clinic owners had reneged on her raise. Warring emotions made her stomach churn. But when she met Kieran Love’s deep green eyes, twinkling as usual and focused solely on her, it sent a jolt of serenity through her psyche.
“Hey gorgeous,” he said, as he slipped out of his sweatshirt. “Ready for the torture session?”
She blew out a breath and got to her feet, wishing she’d worn her newer scrubs today, even as she shook her head at such an absurd thought. He’d already climbed onto the tall treatment table in anticipation of their hour or so together. She must have sighed out loud because he frowned and put a large palm over hers.
“What’s up, sweets? Why the heavy sighs? Wedding planning got you down?”
Focusing down on their hands that now rested on his once-shattered knee, she flinched, and pulled away fast—too fast.
“Sorry. Awkward.” He tucked his arm behind his head and trained his gaze toward the ceiling. Her face flamed hot all over again.
“It’s all right.” She got to work putting him through the therapy paces, admonishing him for continuing to play basketball and run on the leg that had been broken on national television during his rookie season in the NBA. They had history—plenty of it—but it remained firmly in their mutual past. Especially now that they were both engaged to other people.
“Ow, easy there, sweetheart,” he muttered, dragging her from the zone-out she entered every time she treated Kieran Love, mainly to distract herself from the fact that she got to touch him, three times a week. His face, so close to hers as she manipulated his leg, bringing his knee toward his chest made her a little dizzy. “I’m not made of rubber. My hammies are tight.”
“Because you played again yesterday,” she said, bushing to the roots of her hair at his wide, wicked grin. “Dumbass.” She smacked his shoulder and got out of his away so he could head over to the treadmill.
“What can I say? The Love family traditions will not be hampered by me and my bum leg.”
“Yeah, well you ought to think before you worry about your stupid traditions. You’re never gonna fully heal if you don’t.”
After programming the treadmill for a light jog, she observed his footfalls and hips while he ran, knowing she’d see the same thing she saw every time—that he favored his left knee so much he’d thrown off his cadence and risked injuring his other leg, the stubborn so-and-so. But she had to admit, seeing him again had lifted her saggy spirits.
They bantered while he ran. When she had the nerve stimulation machine running along the ugly scar he got quiet. Unusual, since the man could and would talk the birds right out of the trees.
She watched his face for a few seconds, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from asking about his wedding plans. It was a real downside of moving home after she’d gotten her sports med certification in Michigan—knowing more than she cared to about her first boyfriend and his future wife.
“Cara.” Her colleague’s voice interrupted her rising, irrational jealousy. “Kent’s on the phone. Says it’s urgent. I can take this one.” The woman pointed to Kieran’s leg.
“Oh, um, okay.” Cara headed for the desk in their shared office.
“Hi, hon.” Her fiancé’s voice made her wince. The man had no volume control sometimes. “Whatcha doing?”
“Working. You know that. What’s so urgent?” She clenched her jaw against the urge to apologize for snapping at him.
“Well, the bo
ys want to meet up and I know we still have to do the caterer thing and settle on the menu and all.” He trailed off, unwilling to impart the obvious news—that he would be leaving her to make the final decisions on some important aspect of their looming, giant, over-the-top wedding. She counted to ten. “Honey?” her successful husband-to-be pleaded, waiting for her to relieve him of the burden of saying you’re on your own, kid.
“That’s fine. I’ll pick the menu but you’re not allowed to complain about any aspect of it.”
“Deal. You’re such a sweetheart.”
“Glad you think so, considering I’m about to marry you and all.”
She caught sight of her former boyfriend flirting mercilessly with the younger, cuter-than-her girl running the machine over his knee. Pausing to issue another mental reminder that she’d caught a live one in Kent Lowery Jr., she forced thoughts of her stupid, high school obsession with the funny, lanky, redheaded man lying on the treatment table across from her out of her head. The irony that both she and Kieran were about to marry attorneys did not escape her. Never mind that his soon-to-be-spouse was a high-powered corporate somebody and her future husband a classic ambulance chaser with billboards blaring out Call Kent 1800lawsuit all over Interstate 64 between here and Louisville.
“Dinner still on tonight?”
She blinked and refocused on the voice in her ear.
“Sure,” she said, leaning against the edge of the cluttered desk. “I found out I’m not getting that raise, though. So we should…”
“I told you that doesn’t matter.” An ugly edge crept into his voice. One she’d only heard a few times and did not care for in the slightest. “My wife won’t have to work.”
“This isn’t the fifties. Stop acting like it doesn’t matter. It matters to me.”
“Oh hon, you know I’m messing with ya. Besides, once I get you knocked up, you’ll have to stay home.”
Cara’s face burned. Kent’s old-fashioned ways sometimes shocked her. While she appreciated his romanticism, she had to admit that their courtship had been of the whirlwind variety—well, the “courtship” after she’d had drunk sex with him in a bar bathroom in Lexington that is. But he’d been full-frontal, lots of roses, wine and fancy dates after that. The whole thing had the aura of fantasy, most days. By way of anchoring in the here-and-now, she focused on her giant engagement ring.
“You’re so cute when you go all feminist. I can feel you fuming through the phone.” He chuckled. “Relax, Gloria Steinem. I’m kidding.”
Problem being of course, he only half-meant it. The Lowerys were old school Republicans with generations of money propping them up. Kent had grown up on the wealthy side of Louisville but had founded his practice here in the new suburbs of Lexington after graduating from law school. Claiming that her red hair would be good luck for the Lowery family, his brittle, patrician mother had swept Cara and her own mother into her ritzy social circle so fast neither of them could protest.
Two separate bridal teas in Louisville loomed on her horizon, one at the Lowery family estate on Riverside Drive and the other at the downtown Louisville Athletic Club. Both of which would be crowded with people she didn’t know but who’d clutched her short, less than perfect-figured, redheaded self to their collective bosom as if she’d been born with her own silver spoon. Which she most definitely had not.
“I love you, babe. See ya tonight. Wear a nice dress… one with sleeves.”
Cara clenched her jaw against the urge to remind him that she understood the dress code for the country club when she realized the phone had already gone dead. Kieran stuck his head around the corner, surprising her.
“Gotta run. Mama Love’s dinner waits for no late sibling.” His crooked smile sent a spike of long-forgotten longing through her gut.
“How is she doing?”
His grin widened. “Great, especially now that there are two grandbabies to spoil.”
She waved as he ambled toward the front door of their strip mall PT clinic wondering not for the first time why she’d dumped him all those years ago.
About The Author
Amazon best-selling author, beer blogger, brewery marketing expert, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz Crowe is a Kentucky native and graduate of the University of Louisville currently living in Ann Arbor. She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse.
Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”). More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very much “real life.”
With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and at times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.
Don’t ever ask her for anything “like a Budweiser” or risk bodily injury.
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Read More Liz Books
The Love Brothers Series:
Coach Love
Coming soon….
Love Brewing
Safe Love (a Free Love Brothers Novella)
Family Love
The Stewart Realty Series:
Floor Time
Sweat Equity
Closing Costs
Essence of Time
Conditional Offer
Escalation Clause
Mutual Release
Good Faith
House Rules
Coming soon….
Settlement Statement
The Black Jack Gentlemen Series:
Man On
Red Card
Shut Out
Coming soon….
Hat Trick
The Turkish Delights Series:
Turkish Delights
Blue Cruise
Tulip Princess
The Diplomat’s Daughter
Flower Passage
Stand Alone Novels:
Paradise Hops
Cheeky Blonde
Honey Red
Caught Offside
Healing Hearts
Coming soon….
Vegas Miracle
The Tap Room
Lady Balls
